QualityAssurance
In this section, we cover the activities of the QA team[1].
Contributing Writer: Adam Williamson
Test Days
This week's Test Day[1] was on iBus[2], the new default input method framework for Asian languages in Fedora 11. Over 15 people came out to test and report their results, and overall the new system seemed to be working solidly, but testing revealed several issues for the developers to work on. Thanks to all who came out for the Test Day.
Currently, no Test Day is scheduled for next week - it is too close to the scheduled release of Fedora 11 for any testing to produce results directly in Fedora 11 final release, but if you would like to propose a test day which could result in changes for post-release updates, or an early test day for Fedora 12, please contact the QA team via email or IRC.
Weekly meetings
The QA group weekly meeting[1] was held on 2009-05-13. The full log is available[2]. Will Woods reported that he had been doing a lot of upgrade tests, but had not had time to write them up formally as test cases as was planned at the previous meeting.
Adam Williamson reported that he had completed the revision of the Fedora bug workflow page[3] to include the alternative processes agreed for closing bugs in Rawhide at the previous meeting, and had made further changes. He directed the group to his announcement email[4] for further details.
Will Woods reported there had been little work on the autoqa project during the week, as testing for Fedora 11 release had taken priority.
The group discussed how to get feedback on the conduct of Test Days themselves, rather than on the software being tested. Adam Williamson suggested adding a 'suggestion box' to the normal layout for Test Day wiki pages. Jóhann Guðmundsson suggested an email to the fedora-test-list mailing list. James Laska wanted to get in touch with the maintainers who had been involved with Fedora 11 Test Days for their suggestions; Adam Williamson thought it better to simply contact them via email then attempt to set up some kind of survey system.
The group then discussed the Fedora 11 release situation. James Laska explained that Jesse Keating had already led a complete review of all outstanding blocker bugs for the release, trimming the list from over 70 to under 40 by downgrading the priority of some issues, and closing some which had already been addressed, after testing. Jesse thought the planned schedule for a second round of reviews was too late, and decided that it should happen on 2009-05-18. The group agreed that the handling of the final stages of release had not been optimal for F11, and for F12 the group should endeavour to get the blocker bug review done earlier in order to be ready for the release candidate phase, and that it would be useful to hold more blocker review meetings earlier in the cycle overall.
The group then discussed the release candidate phase (note that release candidate builds are generally not widely distributed beyond the QA group, for reasons of timing and available resources). James Laska explained that he planned to create an installation test matrix, with 'how to test' documentation. Will Woods and Jesse Keating were already working on smoke testing early pre-RC builds. Adam Williamson suggested sending an email to fedora-test-list to remind members that now is an ideal time to be testing installation from Rawhide.
Jóhann Guðmundsson raised the issue of the lack of clarity regarding Fedora's target user base, which Adam Williamson had mentioned in discussions on fedora-devel-list. Jesse Keating mentioned that the issue was already under active discussion by the board. After a long discussion, the group all agreed that the QA group did not need to have an opinion on what type of user Fedora should be targetting, but should make it clear to the board that the lack of a clear definition of this issue was actively affecting the ability of the QA group to work effectively, and QA work would benefit immediately from a clear resolution of this issue, whatever the resolution may be.
Jóhann Guðmundsson asked about progress on Jesse Keating's proposal to drop the Alpha milestone for the Fedora 12 release cycle. Jesse reported the proposal had been approved by the Release Engineering group and then by FESCo.
The Bugzappers group weekly meeting[5] was held on 2009-05-12. The full log is available[6]. John Poelstra reported that the planned email to fedora-devel-announce about the housekeeping changes in Bugzilla for Fedora 11 release was ready, and asked for feedback. The group agreed the email looked fine except for talking about Fedora 12 instead of Fedora 11. John promised to fix this and then send out the email.
The group briefly discussed the query used to find bugs filed on Rawhide to be changed to Fedora 11, and mostly agreed that it looked fine.
Adam Williamson reported on the progress of the triage metric system. Brennan Ashton had been very busy during the week and hence difficult to get hold of. He reported that the Python development group was waiting for Brennan to provide test data for them to confirm their proposed fixes to the code were correct, and he was trying to get Brennan to provide this data.
Adam Williamson also reported on the progress of the proposal to include setting the priority / severity fields as part of triage. The request for feedback on fedora-devel-list had produced little response; Adam suggested this wasn't a problem, as the main point was to make sure no developers were actively opposed to the proposal for good reasons. The group agreed that Adam would send a mail to the list to move the process along with a view to starting work on priority / severity as part of the initial triage process soon.
Edward Kirk revived the proposal to create a 000-Not-Sure-What-Component-To-File-Against component to catch bug reports when the reporter was not sure what the component should be. Adam Williamson pointed out the potential drawback to the proposal was that it would encourage reporters not to bother selecting the correct component for their report, thus needlessly increasing the load on the triagers. The group agreed that the current small number of bugs filed against the 0xFFFF component which currently occupies the first spot in the components list indicated this was not a problem worth making an active effort to address, and further agreed to work on correctly assigning all bugs currently filed against 0xFFFF.
The next QA weekly meeting will be held on 2009-05-20 at 1600 UTC in #fedora-meeting, and the next Bugzappers weekly meeting on 2009-05-19 at 1500 UTC in #fedora-meeting.
- ↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/Meetings
- ↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/Meetings/20090513
- ↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/BugStatusWorkFlow
- ↑ http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-May/msg01034.html
- ↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/Meetings
- ↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/Meetings/Minutes-2009-May-12
Upcoming Bugzilla changes
John Poelstra announced[1] that the regular housekeeping changes to Bugzilla for a new release would be happening on 2009-05-26, with all bugs filed on Rawhide being changed to Fedora 11, and a comment left on bugs filed on Fedora 9 that they must be moved to a later release if confirmed still to be valid, or else they will be closed as WONTFIX.
Bugzappers new member SOP
Adam Williamson reported[1] that he had revised the new members SOP[2] to be clearer and more explicit, and the page explaining how to join the Bugzappers group[3] to fully explain the revised process, including the self-introduction email.
Priority / severity process
Adam Williamson followed up[1] on the priority / severity proposal, explaining that no significant negative feedback had been received from the development group, and asking for votes on which method for setting these fields the group should proceed with.